Chapter 68
Hard Reset
LYRA
At Boone’s yell, all of us go still and quiet, trying to make like we don’t exist as we wait for that fucking bell to ring.
But it doesn’t.
I’m trying not to let the internal loop of my voice in my head repeating “oh my gods” over and over again drown out what’s happening up here on the bridge.
We all look…afraid is not the right word.
Petrified.
Petrified is the word I’m looking for. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cronos like this. Not in this way. Not even the day his children attacked him.
“What happened?” I ask him softly. “Tell us.”
He swallows so hard, the gulp of it is audible, bouncing off the rock walls. The sound of a Titan’s terror is definitely one of the worst noises in the world. It sends a fresh wave of my own crushing fear ripping through me.
“Time just reset,” he whispers.
It reset? But…I’m still here.
I’m vaguely aware of slipping back into a state of shock as Boone jumps to his feet with a squelch of his boots in my blood. “What?” I hear him demand. I’m still kneeling on the ground. “Then why are we still here?”
But the answer is on Cronos’ face. In the tenor of his fear. All of their fear.
“The point we reset to moved forward,” I say. It’s not a question.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the way Boone cranks his head around to look at me. “So it’s not a hundred and fifty years ago now?” he asks.
The memories Mnemosyne showed me—she showed them to me in patches but grouped and in chronological order, and suddenly it all makes more sense.
“The reset moved us forward in time. Am I right?” I ask Cronos. Seeing myself die wasn’t what tipped me off. The weird feeling after clued me in.
The Titan shoves his hand through his hair in a gesture that is so patently like Hades, the tiniest corner of my mind wants to relent, wants to give the Titan a hug.
But we need to know. “Am I right?”
Blowing out a sharp breath, he drops his hand to his side, then nods. “Sometimes, when time resets, it doesn’t go all the way back to the same moment it started from,” he admits in a whisper.
“You didn’t think you should tell us this once we knew about how things operate down here?” I swear Boone’s close to taking Cronos by the throat.
Cronos doesn’t look at him, though. He’s still focused on me. “It’s rare.”
“How rare?” Boone demands in a harsh whisper.
By now Rhea has joined us on the bridge, slipping her hand in to her husband’s. “We’ve had only four resets that started from a new point in time. The one we’ve been circling on lately started when Persephone ended up down here. Before that, there were hundreds of years between resets. Thousands.”
Cronos stares at Rhea, exchanging so many thoughts with a single expression. “I didn’t even think it was possible.”
Boone looks at me, waving a hand at them. “Do you believe them?”
“Mnemosyne’s memories,” I remind him. “I’ve seen it. I just didn’t know what I was looking at. They’re telling the truth.”
The look Cronos gives me is a combination of appreciation—I think for my believing him—and apology as well, as if he thinks all of this is his fault.
But it’s not. Or not entirely.
He may have broken time, but I just told Hades things. Sure, it’s been a few days down here since then, but…
What if this is because of me? What if this is my fault?
I’ve been dicking around with powers beyond my comprehension, assuming I was smart enough to figure it all out. Was I horribly wrong?
“Fine. I’ll believe them because you tell me to, but one thing is for damn sure,” Boone says. “Lyra’s not going into Hera’s Lock. Not if that’s how she comes out.”
Boone disappears from view entirely, using his thief’s power to become invisible. Only the sound of his feet on the ground tells me that he takes a running leap right at the abyss.
Rhea, moving with the speed not even the gods possess, snatches him from the air and slams his invisible form down on the ground. He blinks back into visibility, hands going to her grip on his throat. She’s kneeling on his legs, and Boone, no matter how he tries, can’t dislodge her.
“I know you want to protect Lyra, but don’t be rash,” Rhea tells him with the utmost calm. “You are not simply jumping in there before we form a plan. We don’t know if you’re just as important as she is yet.”
Boone’s eyes bulge before he gives in, tapping her arm.
“You won’t jump?” she asks, still sounding like she’s chatting about the weather over tea in a library where she has to keep her voice down. “I have your word.”
He nods, and when she lets go, he comes up coughing hard.
I’m glad she stopped him, though. Otherwise, I would have had to go over the ledge after him. And I really don’t feel like going through the gruesome death that just happened to me a second ago.
Rhea leads the others away, but my feet are rooted to the spot, head spinning and guilt trying to induce a heart attack.
Did I do this?